These exaggerators--these _captatores_ (and _occisores_) _verborum_--have no idea of the adaptation of means to ends. They are not deficient in forces--they have a powerful army, but no generalship. Horse, foot, and artillery; it's all vanguard. Right, left, and centre--but all vanguard. At the first glimpse, pioneers and scouts, rank and file, sappers and miners, sutlers and supernumeraries, all come thundering down like a thousand of brick, and gleaming in the purple and gold of imagery, to rout, disperse, and confound their obstacle; even if it's only a corporal's guard of one private! This _specialite_ in newspapers has occasionally been ridiculed, though not very well. Dickens's _Eatonsville Gazette_ and _Independent_ are perhaps the best caricatures; and they are a very good embodiment of a particular class of partisan provincial papers; but they are utterly inadequate to characterize the exaggeration that runs riot through the whole tribe of periodicals--and _amok_ through the serried ranks of Anglo-Saxon words. See the _New York Rostrum_; daily, weekly, and semi-weekly. It is rampant! It suspects an abuse, and it ramps against it. It seizes an idea, and it ramps toward its development. All who are not with it are against it, and all who are against it are either fools or knaves. The _Rostrum_ never chronicles railroad accidents. Oh, no! It only tells its readers of dastardly and cowardly outrages, committed by blood-thirsty fiends in the shape of presidents and directors against virtuous and estimable passengers, whole hecatombs of whom are assassinated to gratify the hideous appetite for carnage of the officials aforesaid; every one of whom, from the president to the water-boys, ought to suffer the extremest penalty of the law. It doesn't say that they ought to be hung. No! capital punishment was the most benighted characteristic of barbarism. It is a horrid atrocity to bring it down to the present day. Nobody ought to be subjected to it but the slimy reptiles who advocate its continuance. Not only does the _Rostrum_ behave like a wild bull of Bashan when it is fairly under way, but it is a perfect rocket at starting. It makes haste to commit itself. It is continually entering into bonds to break the peace. Its principle is not unlike that of the Irishman in a row: 'Wherever you see a head, hit it.' It deals around little doses of shillelah, just by way of experiment; and if the unlucky head does not happen to be that of an enemy, make it one; so it's all right again. It carries whole baskets of chips on its shoulders, knock one off who will.